In our new Fun Friday series, we're curating some links from around the web that are getting us excited about our industry. This week, we're thinking about A.I. & productivity, two topics becoming more related each day.
Automation: Today & tomorrow
The first new find on the web that's got us thinking harder and smarter is a TEDTalk recently given in Mancheste called "A.I. & The Future of Work."
This presentation works to make the same point we did in our recent post about A.I.: automation and artificial intelligence are not the same thing. Automation is already part of our lives, thus causing concern for some workers whose jobs may be replaced by machines in the future. That's different from artificial intelligence that not only completes tasks, but learns from those tasks to complete the task more efficiently and more intelligently next time.
What's particularly striking about this presentation for us is the emphasis at the end on the human and the power of creativity, critical thinking, and empathy. Machines cannot learn these uniquely human capabilities.
Learning about learning
Coursera.com offers tons of free courses to learn about all manner of subjects, from math to biology and even how to learn. Because we're thinking about productivity and all that we can offer to increase employee productivity, we enjoyed learning about the universal problem of procrastination.
According to the course's teacher, Dr. Barbara Oakley, the problem of procrastination happens "when you look at something that you really would rather not do...you activate the areas of your brain associated with pain." Then, Dr. Oakley says that our brains turn our attention toward something not associated with that pain, thus our tendency toward procrastination.
However, it's entirely possible to avoid avoiding the tasks that we somehow associate with pain. Dr. Oakley says that "researchers discovered that not long after people actually started working on what they didn't like, that neurodiscomfort disappeared."
Essentially, we need to just do the job we're avoiding and it won't be as bad as our brain first perceive. Dr. Oakley's practical advice is to just spend 25 minutes doing that task and you'll accomplish more than you thought you would.
Related Article: Fun Friday: How To Be More Productive By Learning From Mistakes and Laughing More
our Fun Friday takeaway
Perhaps combining artificial intelligence with avoiding procrastination will yield even more productivity. That's why we offer a time and expense solution that does the heavy lifting for you, so you can turn your attention to your real job and get busy procastinating on something else.
For more information on DATABASICS Time & Expense Tracking Software, contact us or call (800) 599-0434.
DATABASICS provides cloud-based, next generation Expense Reporting, P-Card Management, Timesheet & Leave Management, and Invoice Processing automation. Specializing in meeting the most rigorous requirements, DATABASICS offers the highest level of service to its customers around the world.
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